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If the player's town has enough weeds to generate the "worst" rating, a giant, smelly flower known as the Rafflesia will appear. The player cannot remove it by picking it or digging it up. To completely remove a Rafflesia, the player must pick all the weeds in the acre surrounding the plant. Right after removing the weeds, the plant will wilt.

When the town holds the lowest rating, the environmental report in the Civic Center will read: "This place is the pits! Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong! There's not a single thing I like in this town!" and Pelly will state "Hmm... You know, I think the problem is there are those gross flowers that keep showing up. You really have to work daily to prevent eyesores like that from sprouting." while Phyllis will comment "There must be a flower that smells terrible somewhere in town. Well, if that's the problem, maybe they should just stop planting them! (Come on, genius!)"

One minor good thing about the Rafflesia is that flies are usually nearby and easy to catch. This mimics the real life behavior of the Rafflesia, which emits the odor of rotting flesh to attract flies in order to pollinate. In City Folk and New Leaf, the Rafflesia can be seen in the insect section of the museum. Once the fly is caught and donated to to Blathers, it will be seen flying around the plant.

In New Leaf, Rafflesias have different spawning conditions. A Rafflesia can only spawn in underdeveloped towns and is no statement about the cleanliness of a town. The town has to have less than 3 PWPs (permanent ones count as well) and a low number of trees. Only one Rafflesia can spawn at a time. Against popular belief, weeds, trash, lack of flowers, time travelling, town rating and town ordinance are not involved in the spawning process. Therefore, plucking all weeds and removing all items from the ground will not get rid of a Rafflesia. However, planting more trees and/or building more PWPs will. As soon as these conditions are met, the Rafflesia will appear wilted on the next day and entirely disappear on the next but one day.

Further Information

A real Rafflesia

The Rafflesia belongs to the family of parasitic flowering plants. The flower that can reach up to 1 meter in diameter and weigh 10 kilograms, making it the largest flower alive. It can be found in Borneo, the Philippines, Sumatra and Indonesia. It is parasitic in the fact that it lacks any observable leaves, stems or even roots, so it has to inhabit spaces on a plant host and collect nutrients from it. The Rafflesia is also known as "the corpse flower" or "meat flower" because it emits a very foul odor, which attracts flies that pollinate it. It also takes a very long time to grow: it takes 9 months for the bud to turn into the flower, but the flower only lasts 10–20 days.

Trivia

A Rafflesia is the opposite of Jacob's Ladder. Both plants appear due to town conditions.